Amazongate in The Sunday Times - by Richard... Sunday, January 31, 2010

Amazongate in The Sunday Times - by Richard... Sunday, January 31, 2010

From Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times we get an article headed: "UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim," - one of several on climate change in today's edition

It tells us that a "startling report" in the IPCC report claiming that that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest "was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise."

This is "Amazongate" writ large, where the IPCC launched the scare story that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland – and the source turns out to be a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists.

They had based their "research" (Leake's quotations) on a study published in Nature which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.

The detail is familiar to readers of this blog, and some might note a small addition at the end of the piece which says: "Research by Richard North", in what has been a fruitful partnership.

Crucially, Leake brings to the table the substance of an exchange with Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at Leeds University who specialises in tropical forest ecology. This is the same Simon Lewis cited by the BBC's Roger Harrabin, who has him say: "The IPCC statement is basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced."

Leake, who had extensive communications with the man, however, presents a completely different picture. Lewis describes the section of Rowell and Moore's report predicting the potential destruction of large swathes of rainforest as "a mess".

In a direct quote, Lewis goes on to say: "The Nature paper is about the interactions of logging damage, fire and periodic droughts, all extremely important in understanding the vulnerability of Amazon forest to drought, but is not related to the vulnerability of these forests to reductions in rainfall." Then we get Lewis saying: "In my opinion the Rowell and Moore report should not have been cited; it contains no primary research data."

Compare and contrast this with The Sunday Telegraph view that the IPCC had "accurately represented" the Nature paper.

Leake is clearly unconvinced, reporting that this is the third time in as many weeks that serious doubts have been raised over the IPCC's conclusions on climate change. And this weekend Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was fighting to keep his job after a barrage of criticism – which is why The Sunday Telegraph writes a 750-word piece about his new novel.

Even the WWF takes it more seriously, saying it prided itself on the accuracy of its reports, but is investigating the latest concerns. "We have a team of people looking at this internationally," says Keith Allott, its climate change campaigner.

Scientists such as Lewis are demanding that the IPCC ban the use of reports from pressure groups. Georg Kaser, a glaciologist who was a lead author on the last IPCC report, said: "Groups like WWF are not scientists and they are not professionally trained to manage data. They may have good intentions but it opens the way to mistakes."

And, in its own leader, headed, "Bad science needs good scrutiny", The Sunday Times makes a comparison between Dr Wakefield, who has recently been savaged by the GMC, and Dr Pachauri who "is still head of the IPCC, although he presided over the use of dodgy science in its reports and ignored legitimate criticism of that science."

"He should go," says the paper.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

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And the "professionals" write? - by Richard... Saturday, January 30, 2010

"It can be revealed," write Richard Gray, science correspondent and Rebecca Lefort, in The Sunday Telegraph that the IPCC report made use of 16 non-peer reviewed WWF reports.

The strap line reads: "The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine," and we are told that this "revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the (sic) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming."

Superficially, this looks like good stuff. But it goes downhill fast. The intrepid pair go on to write:

One claim, which stated that coral reefs near mangrove forests contained up to 25 times more fish numbers than those without mangroves nearby, quoted a feature article on the WWF website. In fact the data contained within the WWF article originated from a paper published in 2004 in the respected journal Nature.

Then we get this:

In another example a WWF paper on forest fires was used to illustrate the impact of reduced rainfall in the Amazon rainforest, but the data was from another Nature paper published in 1999.

... which is followed by this:

When The Sunday Telegraph contacted the lead scientists behind the two papers in Nature, they expressed surprise that their research was not cited directly but said the IPCC had accurately represented their work.

Whaaaaaaaaaaa? What kind of hackwittery is this? Are they barking mad or just stupid? Or what? There we have "Amazongate" breaking out into the MSM, with Bookerin the same newspaper writing:

This WWF report, it turned out, was co-authored by Andy Rowell, an anti-smoking and food safety campaigner who has worked for WWF and Greenpeace, and contributed pieces to Britain's two most committed environmentalist newspapers. Rowell and his co-author claimed their findings were based on an article in Nature. But the focus of that piece, it emerges, was not global warming at all but the effects of logging.

These children have missed the point completely. In this post and then this, we show that the assertions made by the WWF paper are not in any way supported by the Naturepaper and actively misrepresent its findings.

But hey, Richard Gray and Rebecca Lefort are real journalists. They are the professionals. So they ring up the authors of the Nature papers who tell them the IPCC "had accurately represented their work". And that's what goes in the newspaper, contradicting Booker and missing a front-page story.

Meanwhile, Robert Mendick and Amrit Dhillon, hot on the trail of Pachauri – whom they describe as "the world's most powerful climate scientist" – write a 750-word news piece on his "racey (sic) romantic novel." They can't even spell "racy".

To cap it all, in a totally wasted opportunity, the paper writes a leader on it. And then they wonder why The Sunday Telegraph is haemorrhaging readers and losing money.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

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A couple of blogs - by Richard...

A humorous piece on Autonomous Mind which tells us: "Climate change deceit close to making the Pachauri extinct", is followed by Subrosa with: "Warming News for Climate Change Deniers".

Since the blogosphere is very much part of the story now (and always has been), I'll try to do a round-up of interesting climate-related blogs tomorrow.

Oh! And I nearly forgot - Fox News has done "Amazongate" big time, and was not afraid to link to EU Ref. The thing I enjoy most about this is that bloggers can now reach out to the world, without huge resources, and make an impact.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD